


Under the Skin

by Lies_Unfurl



Series: Under the Skin [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Gen, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 17:11:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lies_Unfurl/pseuds/Lies_Unfurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel returns with the next generation of Leviathans implanted within his body. He intends to take the Colt and kill the things inside of him, destroying himself in the process. Neither Sam nor Dean are willing to let this happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Skin

When Dean hears the ring tone of his cell phone playing from somewhere inside his duffel bag, it’s with hesitance that he gets up and pulls it out, glances at the screen. He and Sam are on a routine hunt, just burning the bones of a frat boy that doesn’t want to stop partying, and so there’s no reason for Bobby to be calling them. And since this is one of his older, private numbers, there’s no one else who should be able to contact him through this phone.

No one who’s alive, anyway.

“Who is it?” Sam calls from the other bed, where he’s sitting with his laptop. Probably double-checking to make sure that they’re going to be desecrating the right grave tonight.

“I don’t know,” Dean says. Probably a wrong number but, for a lark, he hits the “Send” button anyway. Maybe he’ll end up with someone who was expecting phone sex. That’d brighten up his evening. “Hello?”

“Dean?” says a voice from the other end, and with that single question, it kind of starts to feel like everything is utterly and completely changed, being turned over and upside-down. Like he’s just fallen down a rabbit hole.

One word. That’s all it takes to shift the world around.

“Castiel?” he says disbelievingly. It can’t be. Cas betrayed them, Cas screwed up, Cas died. Whatever’s on the other end of the phone, it sure as hell isn’t the angel he thought he knew.

Next to him, Sam sits up on his bed, looking astonished. He motions for Dean to put it on speakerphone. He fumbles around, complying.

“Where are you?” Castiel asks. His voice is rough with disuse, and he sounds like someone who’s had laryngitis for the past month and is just regaining the ability to speak. “We need… we need to talk. There’s a problem.”

“There’s a problem? Cas, how are you even alive? What the hell is going on here?” It occurs to him that this might be a Leviathan impersonating Castiel—but what would be the point of that? They’ve already proven that they can track him and Sam down whenever they want to. And it doesn’t make sense for them to attack on their ground. He and Sam always set out a box of borax as soon as they set up at a new room, just in case.

“Just tell me where you are,” he says, and this time there’s a pleading note in his voice. Dean only heard him sound like this once before, at the very end. When he was desperate to get rid of the souls and make up for what he had done.

Dean glances at Sam and raises an eyebrow. Sam shrugs and nods, his expression a mix of hope and concern.

“Bluebell motel. Coeur d'Alene, Idaho—”

The call cuts off abruptly, and Dean has just enough time to exit out of it before he hears a sharp sound of wings. That’s the only announcement there is before Castiel is staggering and falling against his bed, and then he gets a good look at Castiel, and he realizes that yeah, there is a problem. This is wrong on just about every level that there is.

It’s not like Castiel would look good anyway. His hair hangs limply over his forehead, and his skin is pale and sickly. He’s trembling and breathing hard, like the transportation just took the life out of him.

But none of those are the problem. No, that’s in the way that Castiel’s damp white shirt no longer falls flat against his belly. It’s in the way that one arm is carefully wrapped around his torso.

The way that his stomach protrudes out, unnaturally round. As if in pregnancy, Dean thinks sickly.

Castiel’s eyes meet his for a moment, a mess of guilt and fear and desperation, before they flicker back downward, as if the floor is going to hold the answers to all of his problems. His shoulders slump slightly, and for a moment there’s nothing but the sound of his breathing, heavy and harsh. It’s the first time that he’s ever really noticed that, Dean thinks, remembering back to when he asked Bobby if angels needed to breathe. Now he’s got his answer.

It’s Sam who breaks the silence, with a tentative, “Cas?” His expression is carefully guarded as he says it, and Dean can’t tell what he’s thinking, if he’s still as forgiving of Castiel as he was all those months ago, or if he’s become pissed in retrospect.

“Yes,” Castiel answers. His voice is as scratchy as it was over the phone, but it’s really him. Dean doesn’t need a test to tell (although it’s still probably not a bad idea to make sure he hasn’t developed a borax allergy).

“Okay.” Sam nods, biting down on the inside of his lip. “Can you…can you tell us what the situation is?”

“What he means,” Dean interrupts, finding it in himself to speak, “is, what the hell is going on here? Where have you been for the past three-odd months? What the hell’s up with…” he passes his hand vaguely over his stomach, unable to find it in him to come right out and say it. “And Cas, are you okay?”

At the last one, Castiel actually gives a low laugh, shaking his head. “Dean. No. I’m not okay. I just…I need your help. I need the Colt.”

And whatever Dean was expecting him to say, it sure as hell wasn’t that. Maybe an explanation for why he’s still here, and not a pile of gore at the bottom of a reservoir. Maybe another apology for everything that went down, because Dean doesn’t really know what he thinks about all of this, or just how much Castiel is forgiven in his book. Everything from the past months, , has been completely changed by Cas showing up today, and yet he still has the audacity to ask for their most valuable weapon?

“No,” he snaps. “Fuck, I’m not going to go and hand over the Colt to you. You pop into our motel room after being dead for almost half a year, and you expect us to just give it to you? That’s not how it works.”

Castiel looks at him despairingly, and he sort of feels bad. Not badly enough to hand over the gun, though. “You need to talk first. Give us the lowdown on the situation, and let us decide what to do.” Because, after all, it was Castiel doing fucking impulsive things on his own that got all of them here in the first place, wasn’t it? Dean’s not letting that happen again, he can’t. He won’t risk Sam, and he doesn’t know how well he’d do himself, if a betrayal that large took place for s second time.

And maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t want to lose the angel that flew into his motel room not five minutes ago. Not again. Because even after everything that Castiel did, after every deal he made with Crowley and every soul that he took in, Dean still missed him. It’s not logical, and it’s not that Dean wasn’t completely pissed at him, but there you go. Reason can’t outweigh feeling, and he felt like he lost a friend.

“I don’t know how much time there is,” Castiel says pleadingly. “I think I have a few days, but I can’t be certain. You need to just give it to me, let me get this done--”

“Get what done?” he replies. “Look, Cas, maybe I will give it to you. Maybe. But I sure as hell won’t just hand it over when you show up from the dead and don’t even bother telling me what this is all about. Got it?”

Castiel looks away, and Dean takes that as a confirmation.

“Cas, do you need help? Medical help, I mean?” asks Sam, hovering around at the end of the bed where Castiel sits. “You injured anywhere?”

“No. Nowhere you can assist with,” he replies, someone tersely, but there’s an undercurrent of pain to it, too.

“Okay,” Dean says. “You need any of the basics? Food, water? Change of clothes?”

Castiel’s head jerked up at “water,” and now he’s shaking it rapidly. “No, not water. Please. I…”

“Okay,” Dean replies quickly, holding up a hand. He lowers himself until he’s sitting on the edge of Sam’s bed, and nods at Sam to move his laptop and sit down too. As he moves to do that Dean says, “Start from the beginning, all right? And, uh, preferably, tie it into…that.” He nods at the bulge in Castiel’s stomach, unable to find anything more forward to say about it. “Where’ve you been, since the Leviathans started to walk the Earth?”

Castiel clasps his hands in front of his belly in a sort of parody of the way a loving mother might wrap her arms around her baby bump. He focuses on them, unable or unwilling to meet Dean’s eyes. “After the ritual, the Leviathans were the only ones left in my body—the other souls were weaker; they’d been forced back to Purgatory. Unfortunately, their strength was too much for one earthly body to handle. That’s why they brought me to the reservoir, as I’m certain you know. To be able to spread out their power.”

“We have that part,” Dean confirms. “But we saw you die. We saw them all spread out. Hell, we found your frigging trench coat…”

He won’t admit that he’s held on to it. Even Sam doesn’t know that it’s currently shoved under the backseat of the Impala, for the sole reason that Dean was too much of a sentimental ass to just throw it into some dumpster, the way that he should have.

“I didn’t die,” Castiel says, and he says this in a voice that’s deliberately low and quiet, not just a product of having not spoken for so long. “Most of the Leviathans left, that’s correct. But some remained.”

He stops, and there’s a tense, expecting silence in the room. Dean can tell by his hunched position and the way that his eyes look anywhere but at him and Sam that this is something he doesn’t want to talk about, something too painful or shameful for him to relive.

He has to, though. Dean needs to know what enemy they’re dealing with, what’s so severe that it needs the Colt to be killed, and if Cas doesn’t talk, then he has no way of finding out. Dean understands not wanting to speak about something; he and Sam are the kings of evading shit like that. But sometimes, it’s necessary. Sometimes it comes down to life or death, and something tells him that this is one of those times.

“Why?” Sam gently prompts.

“The Leviathans were weak, after having been in Purgatory for so long. Some of them spread out and went to find human bodies and human meat to sustain themselves. Others…didn’t.” Castiel pauses, picking his words carefully, Dean thinks. That, or debating whether or not to actually go on. “The ones who left were essentially data collectors. Their purpose was to gather information on humanity, on what the world was like today. Others stayed behind. My Grace was still present, along with all of them, and they found that it was an adequate substitute. For the flesh and blood of humans, I mean. It…it nurtured them, provided them with strength after so long. Essentially, they fed off of it.”

Dean can’t help the look of horror that passes over his face, an expression that he sees mirrored on Sam’s. Because, Jesus, he’s pretty sure what Cas is saying is that the fucking things were eating him alive, and that lasted for, what, four, five months? Christ. No, Dean hasn’t forgotten what Castiel did to Sam, and he sure as hell hasn’t forgiven him for it, but the thought of him being subject to that is…it’s wrong, and it makes Dean feel kind of like throwing up, and then going out and killing something.

But of course, that’s not the full story. Dean still needs to know what’s going on. Why Castiel is here, how he escaped. What’s with the…thing.

So he steels himself, meets Castiel’s eyes as best he can, and says in a passably steady voice, “Go on. What happened?”

“The ones who remained inside of me kept me alive. They always made sure that I had enough Grace to sustain myself in the lake. You have to understand, just as the ones who left were to be collecting data, the ones who remained also had a purpose.” His hands aren’t clasped together now. Instead, they’re clenched into fists, tight enough that Dean can see his bottom knuckles paling. “They were. They…” he swallows hard, grits his teeth, and says in a rush, “They needed to create more of them. Build up an army, a new generation.”

Fuck, Dean thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Because now all of the pieces are sliding into place, and they’re making a puzzle that he doesn’t want to see.

Beside him, Sam inhales sharply. “Cas…” he says, and there’s sympathy in his voice, probably a thousand things that he wants to say, and none of them are right. Because what the fuck do you say when a friend-turned-traitor-turned-unknown tells you that he’s been knocked up by evil biblical monsters? The thought is so absurd that Dean almost wants to laugh, except this isn’t funny. Not even close.

“How did you escape from them?” Sam asks quietly, carefully.

“I didn’t. Not really. They left me, in order to allow the offspring proper room to grow. When they did, I was able to wrest away enough control over my vessel to leave the lake and come find you.” Castiel pauses, and adds in a voice that’s low, even given how he’s been speaking, “That’s what I’m focused on now, being able to have control of my body. I have enough power to do so, although not by much. The offspring aren’t strong enough to overpower me yet. They won’t be until they’re ready to come out and find shapes of their own.”

Dean mulls this over. Cas has enough Grace to keep his body his, but that seems to be about it. He managed to fly here, yeah, but other than that he sure as hell doesn’t look like an angel. Dean’s going to guess that he’s essentially fallen, although he can’t bring himself to ask. Not with everything else that Cas is going through.

As for the rest of it, well. He doesn’t even know where to being. There’s a hell of a lot he needs to know, a hell of a lot that Castiel has left out. But there aren’t a lot of discreet ways to ask the sort of things Dean needs to know. And even though he normally wouldn’t give a shit about discretion, this doesn’t really qualify as “normally.” Dean doesn’t know how he’s supposed to talk to Cas, how to deal with this.

But of course, it is something they need to talk about. It is something that they need to deal with, and Dean can’t avoid it, no matter how much he wants to.

He decides to start with the basics—or what would probably pass as the basics, anyway. “How long do you have? Until the…offspring overpower you?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel replies. “Not with any certainty. I can feel them growing inside of me, and I think that I have several days. A week at the most. It isn’t something I want to leave to chance, though. That’s why I came for the Colt. Why I need it now.”

“And what are you going to do with it?” Dean asks. It comes out sounding like a challenge, and maybe it is. He’s pretty sure that he knows, after all, just what it is that Castiel is going to do with it. He needs to hear it from him, though.

Finally, Castiel lifts his head and looks directly at Dean. His eyes don’t show the pain or the sadness that Dean expected to see after hearing his voice. No, they’re filled with a harsh, steely determination that Dean recognizes as belong to the Castiel of before, the angel who was willing to take on all the worlds to get what he wanted. It’s a gaping contrast to the Castiel of a few seconds ago. “I’m going to take it,” he says steadily, “and I’m going to shoot myself. I’m going to kill the things inside of me before they get released onto the world.”

“You’ll kill yourself,” Dean replies. He was expecting Castiel to say that, but it doesn’t mean that he’s any less horrified by the confirmation. “No. No, I’m not handing it over to you.”

“I’m aware that my death will be necessary,” Castiel replies flatly. “So be it.”

Dean stands up and crosses away from the bed, involuntarily starting to pace the room. “You can’t. We just found out that you’re not dead, and you expect us to be okay with that the only reason you showed up is so you could kill yourself? No.”

“Dean, what would be worse? Losing me again, or releasing more of the Leviathans onto the world?”

Dean stares at the dingy clock attached to the motel’s wall, and wishes that there was an easy answer. Because he doesn’t know what he feels know, with regards to Castiel—if he’s a friend right now, or only a warily-trusted ally. If the months spent regretting his death really outweigh the weeks spent hating him for what he did to Sam.

He knows that Castiel hasn’t been forgiven completely in his book. God knows he’s suffered enough for it, and he thinks that Cas completely and sincerely regrets going behind his back, as well as breaking Sam’s wall, but it’s not that simple. It doesn’t reverse what he did, how many people he killed when he thought he was God. Doesn’t change the way that he singlehandedly shoved Sam back into a nightmare world.

He also knows that he’s had nightmares about watching Castiel walk into that lake, about seeing his face twisted in the Leviathan’s sneer. That he couldn’t bring himself to just toss out Castiel’s dingy old trench coat, because it felt like giving up the last part of him that he had, and admitting that he was really gone.

And now that Castiel is here, he can’t just throw him out onto the streets. Especially not now that he’s carrying the bastard child of the Leviathans in him. No matter how pissed Dean is at him, that would be heartless and cruel, and he won’t sink that low.

But. To release more Leviathans would undoubtedly result in the deaths of innocent people. And if Dean doesn’t do everything that he can to stop it, then he is, on some level, responsible for them.

So the choices are letting Castiel die again, less than an hour after he’s popped back up, or else letting civilians die because he didn’t take all the measures that he could to prevent the Leviathans from being born.

No. Fuck that. There’s a third option, there has to be. There always is.

He turns around to Castiel and Sam, both who are watching him carefully, waiting for his answer. “I’m not letting either of those things happen,” he tells them, and his voice is strong and decisive, not allowing for any thought that he might easily change his mind. “You’re going to live, and the Leviathans that you’re carrying aren’t going to kill anyone.”

Castiel sighs. “Dean—”

“No. Sam and I, we’ve got ways to stop them. There’s a compound, sodium--”

“--borate. Yes, I’m aware of it,” Castiel replies. “And it will slow them down, especially if you burn them with it before they’ve taken human forms, but it won’t stop them. Not permanently. And it isn’t as if that would save my life. I’d much rather take the route that allows my death to go along with theirs.”

Dean’s confusion at his last two sentences must be showing clearly, because Castiel elaborates in a voice that’s both tired and pissed. “Dean, how do you expect these creatures to leave my body? I’m not exactly equipped to do it in the biologically natural way. The sheer force of them ripping out of my abdomen will kill me.”

Oh. He hadn’t even stopped to think for a moment about how…that was going to work. So this was going to be an Alien type thing. Okay. Dean tells himself that he can deal with that, even though he doesn’t really know what to do about any of this.

“Fine. We’ll find a way to stop them before they’re born.” He glares at Castiel, who looks like he’s about to protest. “I’m not just gonna hand it over to you and let you kill yourself, okay?”

“Why?” Castiel asks, and it’s so sudden that Dean isn’t entirely sure how to respond. Why? Because Castiel was once his friend, and Dean has been missing that friendship since he thought Castiel died? God knows they weren’t exactly buddies at the end. Because all life is sacred? Because Cas could probably tell him a lot about the Leviathans?

Dean doesn’t know. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to budge from his position. “Because I said so,” Dean replies firmly. He glances at Sam for support.

Sam, to his eternal credit, gets the message. “Cas, what I told you before wasn’t a lie. I still think you’re one of us, okay? And I wouldn’t just let Dean suffer through what you’re experiencing, and I won’t let you. I also wouldn’t let Dean kill himself for the greater good, or anything like that.” His voice has taken on that earnest, innocent quality, and Dean has no idea how he can still sound like that, after everything that he’s gone through. “So trust us, okay? We’re going to get through this. We’ll deal with the Leviathans, and we’ll do it in a way that doesn’t involve killing you. All right?”

Castiel, who had lifted his head to meet Sam’s eyes, looks back to the floor. He sighs again. “I don’t—just—even if I did live, I wouldn’t be an angel. Destroying the creatures inside of me won’t restore what I lost.”

Well, that answers one of Dean’s first questions. He’s good and truly fallen now. Dean isn’t cruel enough to ask about Heaven, about whether or not Castiel can here the angels, if there’s a chance he’ll be allowed back inside. He’s fairly certain that he can guess the answer, and he isn’t going to make Castiel face it head on.

“We can deal with that,” Sam says after a furtive glance is exchanged with Dean. “I mean, we’re both human ourselves. We’re used to it. There’s no reason why we couldn’t deal with you being one.”

“Sam’s right,” Dean affirms. “Trust me, Cas. We can get through this.”

“I…I still don’t like this,” Castiel says doubtfully. “I could lose control at any time. That, or the other Leviathans could track me down—I’m not supposed to be wandering around; it was little more than a stroke of luck that I had enough grace left to leave the reservoir in the first place, let alone evade them until I could find you.”

“If they come, good. We’ll be able to take down more of them,” Dean replies with a firmness that he doesn’t entirely feel. They probably could take down more of the things; it’s not like they ever enter a motel room anymore without setting up borax and machetes, but practically inviting them in really isn’t an appealing idea.

Still, he’ll deal with it. He’s going to save Cas, just like he promised.

“What do you need now?” he asks, figuring that he’ll start where he can. “If you’re not totally an angel, you’re gonna need food, right? Water?”

Castiel flinches at the last word, and Dean remembers that he had a similar response before. That’s something he’s going to have to pursue, but now probably isn’t the time. “I will,” he says, sounding reluctant. “Eventually. Right now, I mostly feel tired.”

“Right.” Which would make sense, because Castiel just escaped from the bottom of the reservoir that he was trapped in for about five months, and he’s probably burning off Grace like the Impala burns gas just to be able to sit upright. “Um. You can take my bed. And, hey.” He steps over to his duffel bag and pulls out an overlarge shirt and a pair of sweatpants that should more or less fit Castiel. “Put these on. You must be soaked.”

Castiel takes the clothes and looks at him. The gratefulness in his eyes is staggering, and Dean shifts uncomfortably under it, because it’s just a pair of sleep pants and an old tee that he hardly ever wears. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” He watches as Castiel lifts himself off of the bed, looking immensely tired. Once he’s in the bathroom, Dean turns to Sam, sighs, and sits down next to him. “Well. This is… different.”

“He was alive,” Sam says quietly. His sympathy for Cas is displayed openly, in the furrow of his brow and in the hunch of his shoulders. “God, Dean, if we’d known…”

“I know,” Dean replies, and then, “Fuck.” It’s all he can think to say, although he knows on some level that there’s a thousand and one things he and Sam should be talking about.

“We could have stopped this,” Sam says. “If we had just thought to make sure he was dead, or something… if I hadn’t been so focused on everything else…”

“Hey.” Dean meets Sam’s eyes and sees blatant guilt in them. “Don’t blame yourself. You were hallucinating the frigging devil, okay? You had to focus on that crap first. And anyway, it’s not like we had any reason to believe that he wasn’t dead.”

“Yeah, but still. That doesn’t make it any easier.” Sam passes a hand down his face, looking as tired as Dean feels right now. “Fuck. He’s—what are we going to do, Dean? How do we fix this?”

“I don’t know,” Dean replies honestly. “I wish I did, but we’ve never dealt with anything like this before. Hell, I don’t think anyone has. I’ll call Bobby and ask him, I guess. But we’ll figure something out. Somehow.” He sighs.

“Yeah. I know. I’ll try researching this in the morning. I mean, I don’t know what I expect to find, but…” Sam shrugs haplessly. “It’s worth a shot, right?”

Dean isn’t too familiar with the wide reaches of the internet (well, the non-illicit parts, anyway) but somehow he doubts that there’s going to be information on what to do when you’ve got a fallen angel who’s been impregnated with the spawn of oozing biblically-evil monsters. “Of course it is.”

He stands from the bed, wincing and feeling old as his joints crack. “I’m going to go outside and talk to Bobby. You can shut down for the night—I’m guessing Cas probably wants to get some rest, and I wouldn’t mind turning in myself. You take the bed,” he adds as an afterthought, remember that there’s three of them, and only two beds. “If we’re gonna be staying here, I’ll see if I can get us into a triple tomorrow.”

“I don’t mind the floor,” Sam says. “Hell, I might just stay up and research all night anyway.”

“Go to bed,” Dean says, pulling out his cell phone and bringing up his contacts list as he heads to the door, hoping to get a better connection outside. “We’ll figure something out in the morning.”

*

Bobby doesn’t have anything besides a gruff, mild happiness at the idea of Castiel being alive. Not that Dean thought he would.

“I’ll take a look at the Leviathan lore for you, but I don’t think it’s gonna bring anything up,” he says bluntly. “This is completely new, Dean. And I don’t think there’s any way to perform a C-section on monster babies.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Thanks, Bobby.”

“No problem. I’d say come on over, but…” Bobby sighs. They still don’t have a home base set up yet, not since the Leviathans burned down Bobby’s house. It’s becoming a real hindrance, but it’s not like they have the cash to spare for a mortgage. “Unless you think that the three of you’d be comfortable in a cabin in the woods.”

“I doubt it. I don’t know how long we’ve got, anyway. Cas thinks only a few days.”

“Damn,” Bobby murmurs. “I would’ve at least liked to see him before he goes dead again. Give him a piece of my mind, and all that.”

“Tell me about it.” Dean sighs and stares up at the cloudy night. He can’t stretch this conversation on much longer, as much as he’d rather not face the situation awaiting him inside. “I’ll talk to you later, then.”

“Yep. You let me know if anything happens, all right?”

“Right. Bye, Bobby.”

Dean ends the call and pockets his phone, and then he leans against the wall of the motel and stares up at the sky for a little while longer, willing the midnight clouds to just tell him what to do; give him the fucking answer to all of this—he doesn’t care whether it’s from the sky, from Bobby, from God Himself. He just wants someone to tell him the answer of how to save Castiel and kill the Leviathan inside of him, because as much as he’s wracking his mind, he sure as hell can’t manage to come up with anything.

*

The next morning, Dean wakes up to the sound of a quiet, pained gasp. He’s become attuned to that, to the sort of sounds that people—Sam—make during nightmares. It’d be a hell of a lot better for his health if he just tuned them out, though, seeing how often they happen.

But when he sits up, wincing because he’s at the pathetic point where sleeping on his back is no longer good for him, he sees that Sam’s bed is empty, and the bathroom light on. Instead, it’s Cas who’s sitting up in bed, entangled in sweaty sheets, and gasping in pain. His head is down, his hands clenched tightly around the blankets.

“Hey,” Dean says awkwardly. “Cas?”

He doesn’t know how to talk to him now, what balance to strike between how pissed he is, and how fucking glad he is to have him back. It’s something that they’ll have to deal with later, but now really isn’t the time. They need to focus on actually keeping Castiel alive so that Dean can chew him up and spit him out later.

Castiel’s head jerks up, and his eyes instantly go to Dean’s face. They only hold his gaze a second before they drop back down to the sheets. “Dean.”

He clambers up, cracking his spine and stretching the last bits of sleep from his muscles. “What’s up? You’ve got that look on your face like you just stubbed your toe, bit your tongue, and threw up in your mouth, all at the same time.”

“It’s nothing,” Castiel says, but he’s blatantly lying, not even trying to meet Dean’s eyes, or even keep his voice steady.

“Bull. Cas, you’ve gotta be honest with me and Sam, okay? If we want to get through this—and we do, really—then you can’t lie to us. Not this time.” It’s a remarkably accepting speech, and Dean feels kind of bad about that. Because he’s good at pretending that everything is all hunky-dory when really it isn’t, but this is…this is different. This time, he knows that his anger is going to come out, and he doesn’t like making things out like they’re all fine in the meantime. Maybe it says something that he feels guilty for leading Cas on, but he’s not in the mood to analyze that.

Cas sighs. “If you must know…I was extending my wings.”

“Oh.” Dean nods. Obviously, there’s something here that he doesn’t understand, some subtle meaning to Castiel’s words. Because at the moment, he really doesn’t know what’s important about Castiel having an early morning stretch. Unless he seriously pulled a wing, which, given everything else he’s been through in the past twenty-four hours, is probably a reasonable possibility. “That still doesn’t explain why you look like crap warmed over—I mean, worse than you did last night. I know you’re, uh, not exactly in great shape right now and that’s fine, I get that, but you seriously do not look all right.”

“It does explain it,” Castiel replies bitterly. “My wings are…failing. Disintegrating, I suppose, is the most accurate term for it.”

And okay, he kind of figured that maybe Castiel’s wings were the source of his pain, but Dean was not expecting that. “Well. Okay. Um, not to be an ass about it, but… why? Why, exactly, are your wings disintegrating?”

Sam chooses that moment to step out of the bathroom, toweling off his damp hair. He opens his mouth to say something, and then closes it quickly and focuses on Cas.

Castiel focuses intently on the beige sheets that he’s still entangled in. When he speaks, it’s in a low, tight voice, but one that sounds moderately less like yesterday’s damaged vocal cord growl. “You’re aware that I’m falling. Fallen, mostly. Heaven no longer welcomes me as part of it.”

“Yeah. You told us yesterday,” Dean says. He perches on the edge of Sam’s bed, and he wonders if this is how all of their conversations are going to happen. At least the beds aren’t infested with anything.

He nods at Castiel to go on, trying to be encouraging.

“And you’re also aware that my true form is far vaster than this.”

“Chrysler Building. Right.” He nods again, and again, Castiel continues.

“As I was imprisoned in the reservoir, my true form gradually…withered, I guess, is roughly the equivalent of it. Or you could think of it as having been absorbed into my vessel. In any case, I was kept more or less in the dark about this. The Leviathans kept me alive, but they kept me from being really aware of my physical matter. For the most part,” he adds, and from the intense way that he’s looking not at, but through the sheets, Dean can tell that part of him is back there right now. “I could feel pain, and other sensations…that’s neither here nor there, though. The point I was trying make is that, over time, I become mostly confined to my vessel. As of yesterday, the only parts of my true…my former self that I could feel were my wings. They were damaged, yes, but functioning. Enough to get me here.”

He takes a deep breath and finishes, “But this morning, when I tried to unfurl them, I found myself unable to. They’re…they’ve mostly fallen apart. Without the Leviathans shielding me, I can feel it entirely, and it pains me some. I’m aware that I look poorly,” he adds, an understandable terseness to his last words.

Dean swallows and nods. His reaction doesn’t really make sense—the bulge that Castiel is currently more or less hiding under the blankets made him feel sick to his stomach and increased his hatred for the monsters that caused it, but this? This is what makes him, more than anything, want to kill the Leviathan, while simultaneously restoring everything that Castiel has lost.

Maybe it’s because he’s seen Castiel’s wings before—or the shadows of them, anyway, all long and black and large. From the first, he’s thought of them as a part of Castiel, ever since he saw them spreading out behind him for the first time. Or maybe it’s all just hitting him now, the extent of what Castiel has been through. Whatever the cause, he vows to himself to find a way to permanently gank the fuckers responsible. It doesn’t fucking matter how pissed off he is, or will be, at Castiel. He’s still going to kill the things that did this.

“What can we do?” asks Sam, and Dean remembers that yeah, he should probably say something. “Is there anything we can get you to help with the pain? I mean…God, Cas.” Sam shakes his head, his face displaying his sympathy in a blatant, open way that Dean could never bring himself to do. “I don’t even know how you’re managing to go through that and still be sitting here.”

“Your concern is…appreciated, but there is nothing that you can do,” Castiel says firmly, actually meeting Sam’s eyes. “Pain medications have never been effective in the past, and I doubt that they could help with something of this caliber.”

“Uh, Cas? No offense, but the reason that the stuff hasn’t worked in the past is probably because anything that hurt you would’ve been way too big for it. If you’re feeling pain on a more human level, chances are that human meds are gonna be able to do something.” Dean stands up and grabs the first-aid kit from his duffel bag. He contemplates giving Castiel some of the strong shit—God knows he could use it—but instead he decides to just go with the Tylenol. He still remembers what Castiel looked like in 2014, and he’s not going to be the one to introduce him to the pleasures of addiction.

“Lemme get you some water to go with that,” he says, tossing the bottle over.

Cas clumsily catches the pills. His eyes have gone wide at Dean’s comment, a deer-in-the-headlights sort of panic that he’s never seen on Cas’s face before. He shakes his head, and when he speaks, it’s with an edge of desperation. “No, please. I’ll take them dry, I’ll be fine. Just don’t give me water, please…”

“Hey,” Sam says. He crosses the room and kneels down in front of Cas, placing a tentative hand on his arm. “Hey. Deep breaths, Cas, okay? Just focus on me. It’s all right. You’re safe here.”

Dean moves to stand beside Sam, who continues to speak to Cas low and soothingly. He doesn’t know how Sam does it—Castiel fucked him over bad, bad beyond words, yet Sam’s still able to talk him down from a panic attack? How the hell does he manage that? He’s pretty damn sure that neither he nor their dad managed to instill that sort of forgiveness into him.

But of course, that’s something that should probably be pondered over later. At the moment, the more pressing issue is Castiel, and the fact that this is the third time he’s freaked out over the mention of water.

“Cas, what is it about water?” Dean asks awkwardly. He’s been dealing with Sam’s issues for just about forever. He knows how to talk to Sam. This, though? This is something entirely different. Castiel’s supposed to be strong, and Dean doesn’t know how to handle a vulnerable version of him. “I mean, we don’t use tap, whenever we can. It’s not going to be Leviathan infected, if that’s the problem.”

Although he’s breathing hard and looks even paler than he did before, Cas seems to have regained some semblance of control over himself. Sam drops his hand and steps back, giving him some space to answer. “It isn’t that. Not entirely. It’s just…” he shudders, at a loss for words in a way that Dean is fairly certain he’s never been before. He looks at Dean, begging him to understand, but Dean can only shrug helplessly. He gets the basics of it—after Hell, he had issues using knives for months; he’s guessing that this is the same idea—but whatever happened to Castiel is different, and Cas needs to talk about it.

“I was trapped for so long at the bottom of the reservoir that I forgot what it was like to be surrounded by air,” he finally says. “The Leviathan kept it so that I didn’t feel it, not like a human would have, but. Just. I don’t want to go back.”

The last part is said in a quiet, barely understandable murmur, and it hurts Dean more than he cares to admit (because it fucking shouldn’t; he’s pissed at Cas for what he did to Sam, and he knows he is, so why the hell does this bother him like this?). But he still feels his chest tighten as Castiel returns his attention back to the bed sheets.

“That’s…” Dean hesitates, not sure what to say. Sam also seems to be at a loss for words, reacting to Castiel’s statement exactly as he did. “You’re not gonna go back, Cas. Trust me, okay?”

“I know that, Dean. On a logical level.” He sighs, frustrated. “But it doesn’t help. It should, but…”

“Hey. Nothing wrong with that. Proves that you’re…” he almost says human, but he catches himself at the last minute. That’s probably not something that Cas needs to hear right now. “You’re reacting in a normal way, okay? That’s, um, normal.” He glances at Sam, pleading for help.

Sam smoothly picks up where he awkwardly left off. “No one wants to go back to something like that. Trust me. And sometimes, things just trigger the memory.” He pauses and then adds, “I mean, for me, it’s Hell. I hate being cold; it reminds me of being near Lucifer. And for you, it’s the reservoir. It makes sense that water makes you think of that.”

Dean starts, staring at him. “You never mentioned that,” he says, unable to keep the note of accusation out of his voice.

Sam shrugs. “I’m dealing.”

“Bullshit. If you actually mentioned it, we wouldn’t be in frigging Idaho. We could be in Florida, Arizona—”

“Dean. It won’t get better if I avoid it. That’s the thing,” he says, looking at Cas. “I can’t stick to the south forever, and the more I let it slide, the worse it’ll get. Which is why, Dean, we’re going to be in Colorado, Montana, Wisconsin, and every other snowy state you can think of this winter. And Cas, you can’t avoid water. It’s not possible. So, even though I know it’s hard, you’re going to have to start drinking it, and showering, and what-have-you at some point. If you want to take a few days off, I mean, I understand. God knows I wouldn’t have wanted to go to Alaska as soon as I started remembering. But at some point, you’ll have to face it. And maybe it can be now.”

Sam stops, out of breath, and shrugs. Dean is fairly certain that he’s deliberately ignoring the glare that’s being sent his way. He nods at the bottle of medicine in Castiel’s hand and says, “So. Um. You want something to swallow that with?”

Castiel is quiet for a moment, just turning the bottle over in his hand. Then he says, “Sam. I appreciate you telling me that, especially since…since I’m the one responsible for what you’re going through. But I don’t understand why I should face my fears when I’m just going to be dead soon enough.” The sheet that’s been wrapped around him falls just then, revealing the bulge of his abdomen, which doesn’t look any better in the light of the morning. Not that Dean expected it to.

In any case, he figures it’s time to intervene. “Cas, don’t even start with the ‘going to be dead soon’ crap. You’re not, because we’re going to sit down and figure something out. We are not going to leave this fucking room until we know what we’re going to do. Except for me,” he amends quickly, “because none of us have eaten breakfast, and I’m hungry, and you probably are too. In any case, I’m going to get you some water, you’re going to drink it—because Sam is right, you can’t just avoid that—and then, after I’ve grabbed something from the diner down the street, we’re going to fix this. Okay?” And he hopes that neither of them bother to point out that avoiding the problem is how he usually operates, because he prefers the whole “Do as I say, not as I do” method.

Cas opens his mouth, as if to protest, and then he apparently thinks better of it. “Very well,” he says quietly. “But I should mention, I don’t think that we are going to be able to come up with something, Dean.”

“Duly noted.” He finds Castiel a water bottle and hands it to him. “I’m running out for breakfast. Any requests?”

When no one expresses any preference, he leaves to grab a few to-go breakfast sandwiches or something from the small place down the street. If Cas has any issues dealing with the meds, Sam will be there. And since Sam apparently completely understands what Cas is going through, that’ll probably work out for the better.

And yes, he thinks as he pulls into the parking lot of Barry’s Bacon Breakfast—“Now serving lunch!”—he is pissed off at Sam for not telling him about the cold thing. As much as Sam might call him a hypocrite for being pissed at that while never actually talking about his own Hell memories, or the things that bring them on, this is different. He’s responsible for Sam, and Sam should fucking tell him shit like that.

But of course, that’s something that they’re going to deal with later. Once Castiel is no longer knocked up with hell-spawn.

*

The beds are both made by the time Dean gets back to the motel room, and Sam is lying on top of his, laptop on his legs. The bathroom door is closed, so Cas must be getting cleaned up. But since the pills and the water bottle are both out of his sight, he takes that as a sign that things went okay.

Still, as he tosses down a vegetarian egg sandwich with faux-bacon strips, he asks Sam for confirmation. “How’d it go?”

“Pretty good. I think.” Sam casts a glance towards the bathroom and lowers his voice, even though he’s not saying anything incriminating. “He took the water—almost choked, but still—and then we talked some.”

“Oh, really?” Dean raises an eyebrow, biting down into his own Big-A** (their label, not his) Bacon Breakfast Sandwich. “And can I get in on your girl talk?”

Sam ignores the jab. “It was just about…things. What happened before, what’s going on now.” He shrugs, unwrapping the foil around his breakfast. “Nothing big.”

Which, Dean knows, is code for “We talked about things that you wouldn’t understand, and I’m not going to tell you about them.” Either because they were actually talking about him behind his back, or because things were shared about the situation that he’s not supposed to know. And he really hopes that it’s the first one—generally, he doesn’t really care about people, even Sam and Cas, gossiping about him, even if he’d much rather prefer that they didn’t bother keeping anything a secret in the first place. The second one, though—that would be bad. They all need to be on the same page for this. Even if Sam is more in on the whole sympathetic, let-me-pat-your-back-and-hold-your-hand thing, it’s still not going to be to their advantage for him to be more in the know about the important things.

But Sam’s jaw is set just enough to tell Dean that he’s not going to spill without a fight. Or at least a long, hard talking-to. Neither of which Dean is interested in right now, so he just lets it go, hoping that Sam’s judgment is good enough to tell the difference between what to keep confidential and what Dean needs to know for their own good.

“So what’s Cas up to right now?”

“Getting cleaned up. I just sent him in with a washcloth and a bar of soap.” Sam shrugs. “I’m not going to make him take a shower. Not when he’s having trouble just swallowing down a glass of water.”

“We can work on that later.” Dean moves to sit down on his bed, and then remembers that Castiel probably needs it more than he does. He grudgingly gets up and goes to sit at the small card table. “So. Ideas.”

“Yeah, about that—”

Castiel walks out before Sam can continue. He moves hesitantly, his eyes warily taking in Dean. Like he might throw him out now that it’s morning, now that he can see everything openly.

And it doesn’t look better now. If anything, it looks worse in the bright, unforgiving sunlight that streams in through the small window. The sweatshirt that he’s wearing covers, but can’t completely hide, the way his abdomen is swollen. His eyes look like they’ve got large, circles of bruises around them, and his chin is stubbly and unkempt. He looks, to put it simply, like crap.

But Dean, to his credit, has enough tact to know not to tell him this. Instead he just says, “Hey, Cas,” like he’s still a perfectly happy, healthy angel. Like everything is fine between them. “Got you something to eat. Just the basics. I don’t know what you like.” He hands over the Simple-Style Sandwich to Castiel, who looks at it as if Dean just handed him a piece of road kill.

“I don’t—” he begins, but Dean cuts him off.

“Yeah, you kind of do have to. Eat, I mean.” He takes a bite of his own sandwich, as if Castiel needs a demonstration. When he’s done swallowing it, he continues, “You’re good as human right now, Cas. And humans eat. Trust me, it’s one of the funner things that we get to do.”

Castiel opens his mouth, shuts it, and then carefully starts unwrapping the sandwich, looking as if it might jump up and bite him at any given moment. He sits down on the bed as he takes his first hesitant bite.

Dean waits until they’re all done eating to move on to the heavier stuff (Castiel finishes last, but he manages to eat more or less neatly, and he actually takes a tentative sip of water when he’s done, without needing to be cajoled by him or Sam. Dean counts that as an improvement). “Okay. So. Cas, you honestly think that the only way out of this is using the Colt?”

“I thought I had established that already.” Castiel leans back against the headboard of the bed, his hands absentmindedly clasped on the protrusion of his stomach. “We’ve no other methods that would likely result in their death.”

“The borax—”

“It deters them. Maybe if they had human forms, it would be an option. Unfortunately, they’re…concentrated.” Castiel frowns, as he works to explain it to he and Sam. “You’ve seen them bleed? That would be their essence. A blackish sort of slime.”

“Yeah. We know what you mean.” Dean nods and tries not to picture it: that dark, half-congealed thing that’s the Leviathan version of smoke pouring out of a vessel’s mouth, swimming around in Castiel. And fuck, now that’s he’s thought that he can’t not see it: all inside of him, moving between muscle and bone and organs and God. Fuck.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes, reminds himself that he’s seen a lot of screwy things in his time, and this is no different. Not even because it’s Castiel. Someone who used to be his friend. “Go on.”

“It would be easy to use the borax solution on it if it had that human form, but as it doesn’t, well. We’d have no way of separating the body parts and ensuring that it didn’t heal itself. The Colt can kill anything; shooting them directly would result in the death of all of them.”

“Theoretically,” says Sam.

Castiel jerks his head once in agreement. “There’s no way to test it, of course.”

“But it’s certain that it would kill you.” Dean leans forward and studies Castiel. He’s already observed the way that Cas looks tired and worn-down, like he’s in perpetual pain—and hell, he probably is. He’s also, of course, noticed the…the pregnancy (because really, that’s what it is, and dancing around the topic isn’t going to do them any good, right?). But the gory details he hasn’t seen, because apparently falling has given Castiel a sense of modesty that he never seemed to be aware of before.

And it isn’t like Dean’s not willing to give that to him. Of course he is, a hundred percent. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t want to put on a strip show if he was in Cas’ place.

Thing is, though, as he sees Castiel sitting on the bed, looking impatient — to get the Colt, he supposes, and to kill himself with it — and out of place (since there really isn’t a place, per se, for a former angel of the lord in some high-rent, cheap-quality Iowa motel room) he kind of needs to know what he’s dealing with. All of it, much as he’d like to give Castiel his privacy.

“Cas, this is gonna sound, uh, weird no matter how I say it, so… could you take off your shirt?”

Sam raises his eyebrows, looking like he’s narrowly keeping a lewd comment to himself, despite the gravity of the situation. Castiel, on the other hand, regards him warily and seems to pull into himself even more. “Why?”

“Look, man, I know this is uncomfortable for you, and I’m sorry. It’s not something that I want you to have to do either, but…” he trails off, trying to figure out how to put this. “We kind of have to see what we’re dealing with here. So we can assess the situation and all. And since neither of us has ever seen anything like this before…” he lets his words hang in the air, shrugging, hoping that Castiel gets the drift.

“He’s right,” says Sam. “I’m sorry. I know that you probably just want to cover up and not…show yourself.” He motions vaguely over his abdomen. Castiel watches with no discernible reaction. “But it would probably help us to actually see what we’re dealing with.”

They both wait for Castiel, who stares down at his hands, or maybe at the pregnancy extending before him. Finally he says, “Very well.”

He turns away from them so that they can only see his back and pulls the sweatshirt off clumsily, and Dean thinks, for no particular reason except maybe to distract himself from the horror of the situation, that if it were him he probably would have done a fake striptease. Something to lighten the situation.

Castiel folds the shirt up stiffly, lays it down next to him. Then, his head still bowed, he reluctantly turns back to face them.

Dean keeps his face stoic and dispassionate. He forces himself not to grab the flask at his side. He’s running low, and he’s pretty sure that he’s going to need the booze later.

Looking just at Castiel’s face, he seems okay. Perfectly fine, if you ignore the tired lines and circles around his eyes. His pecs, too, are still smooth and flat. His chest looks perfectly normal, not like a woman’s would if she were, well. Pregnant. Although maybe her body wouldn’t produce milk and all that stuff if it was Leviathans that she was carrying.

Finally, Dean makes himself take in Castiel’s abdominal area, the whole reason that he forced him to strip like this in the first place. Castiel seems to tense even more as he does, like he knows what Dean is looking at. Like he’s waiting for his reaction, and isn’t expecting a particularly good one.

Castiel’s abdomen rounds out in front of him in a sort of parody of a baby bump. His skin looks stretched tight, and like it would be sensitive to the touch. Bruises mar the surface of it, their dark shades contrasting the pale, reddish tone of the rest of his skin. Dean feels his own stomach ache at the sight, and he can’t be bothered to keep his sympathy off of his face. This time, he doesn’t resist the urge to take a swig from his flask. It’s early but fuck, he’s not going to be able to get through the day stone-sober.

On the bed opposite where Castiel is, Sam makes a small noise of pain. Like Dean, he’s not bothering to hide any of his compassion. Castiel flinches at the sound, and Dean thinks that he sees shame on the fallen angel’s face. But before he can pursue that line of thought, the skin of Castiel’s belly…ripples. Like something is pushing at it from the inside, trying to get out.

Cas gasps, his hands automatically going down and pressing against the skin. His eyes screw shut in pain, and before Dean knows what he’s doing, he’s next to Castiel, feeling the hot skin and sharp bone of Castiel’s shoulder’s pressing against his hands. “Hey. Cas. Cas? Breathe, okay? In and out. Ride through the pain.”

Castiel manages to nod in response, and he takes a deep, unsteady breath. The rippling on his abdomen fades, but the pain apparently still lingers. It takes a few minutes before it seems like he can breathe normally.

As soon as it does, though, Dean lets go of his shoulders and stands up. His face is burning, even though he knows that it shouldn’t be. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, with just being there for someone when they’re hurting as bad as Cas is. But still, actually touching him feels uncomfortable. Intimate, although there was nothing fucking intimate about just holding his shoulders, and Dean really needs to stop thinking about this, because it’s just going to make his head hurt even more than it already does.

“You okay?” he asks, stepping back and practically falling into the chair that had been his seat before. He takes another drink from his flask. It doesn’t do much to help the situation, not with his unnaturally high tolerance for the stuff.

“Relatively speaking, yes,” Castiel answers. He’s deliberately avoiding Dean’s eyes now, but that’s okay, because Dean doesn’t really want to have to look at him either.

“What happened?” Sam asks, keeping his voice steady. Sam’s a lot better at this shit than he is, Dean thinks. If only he could just head out to wherever Bobby’s squatting, leave all of this for Sam to deal with.

“Nothing major,” Castiel replies, although he doesn’t sound too certain of himself. “That’s occurred before. I expect that they’re attempting to find a way out of my body, but they aren’t strong enough. Yet.”

“Is there anything else we should know about?” Dean asks, and his words end up coming out far more accusatory than he had meant for them to be. He tries — and, in his opinion, fails — at making his next words sound softer. “I mean, have they been doing other things like this? Trying to get out, or hurting you? And how often does it happen?”

“That’s the extent of their attempts to be…birthed,” Castiel says, choking slightly on the last word. “As it’s how they plan to exit my body, they haven’t made attempts to leave in any other manner. And no. They haven’t been causing me pain.”

Bullshit, Dean thinks, and he almost says so, but there’s something in Castiel’s tone that tells him that he really, really doesn’t want to go over whatever pain he’s in, and since he knows what that’s like, he lets the subject drop.

“So that means that we’re certain how they’re going to come into this world,” he says instead. He stands up, beginning to pace the rather short length of the motel room. “Okay.”

“I don’t think that really means anything,” Castiel says with a bitter edge to his voice. “How they leave is irrelevant. It would kill me however they did.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Dean insists, although he isn’t entirely sure of his justification for that statement. He’s pulling this argument straight out of his ass. “I mean, maybe it would if they ripped out of you. But that doesn’t necessarily have to happen.”

“What alternatives are there?” Cas asks. “I can’t control them enough to purge them up as one would a demon — and even if I could, that would probably cause my esophagus to collapse, which would be just as unpleasant as dealing with them bursting forth from my abdomen. And I don’t think that any of my other bodily openings are exactly an option.”

Before Dean can even think to comment on that, Sam asks, “What if we could control the birth? Theoretically, would there be a way to release them without, um, an explosion?”

Castiel actually looks at Sam as he frowns. “I don’t understand. There isn’t a way to control them.”

“But let’s say there is,” Sam presses. “Some way to neutralize them while they’re still inside of you. Could we, say, bleed them out?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel replies honestly. He actually looks thoughtful, like Sam’s words are intriguing him, even if he doesn’t think that they’ll ever move beyond speculation. “I suppose that it’s possible that just creating an opening would be enough. But there’s no way to know. I tend to think that it’s…unlikely, though. As I said, my ability to control them is extremely limited.”

“Right.” Sam frowns, thinking. Dean waits quietly, knowing that he’s working on something. “And you wanted the Colt because…”

“…if I shoot myself with it, it will also take the lives of the creatures residing inside of me.” 

“You think,” Dean adds. “We’ve never wasted a bullet on one of them before. It’s always possible that they’re one of the exceptions to the list of things that it can kill.”

Castiel nods, acknowledging his words, but when he replies he’s speaking to a point on the ground, not to Dean. “It is possible, but I don’t think that would be the case. I expect that the things that it can’t kill are lone beings with set purposes, like Lucifer or Michael. Or my Father. I don’t believe that an entire species would be immune to it.”

“Cas is probably right,” says Sam. “I mean, Lucifer was an angel, but we never thought that all angels were immune to it, right? It was just him. As far as I can see, there’s no reason to assume that the new generation of Leviathan couldn’t be killed.” He pauses to take a breath before going on. “Anyway, what I’m getting at is, you think that the only way to use it is seeing to it that you both die, right?” He waits for Castiel to give a wary nod before he eagerly says, “Well, what if it isn’t?”

“That’s impossible,” Castiel says flatly. He seems to shut down, like whatever brief hope he had at Sam’s pondering has been destroyed. “Bullets from the Colt kill whatever creature they come into contact with; that’s what they’re made to do.”

“No. Not necessarily.” His eyes meet Dean’s. “Remember?”

“Yeah. I think. You’re talking about Dad, right?” Sam nods, and he continues, “That’s completely different. You didn’t kill him, but you also didn’t kill the demon. You just released it, remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Sam replies. “I know it was years ago, but it’s not something that you easily forget. Anyway, maybe the fact that it’s different could be used to our advantage.”

“What occurred with your father?” Castiel asks, addressing the question to Sam. Dean feels a flash of annoyance, because what exactly is so appealing about Sam and so repulsive about him? But he lets the thought slide, since it really doesn’t make any sense. Who Cas chooses to look at and who he chooses to avoid shouldn’t make any difference to Dean.

“He was possessed by Azazel. This was, god, five or six years ago?” Sam shakes his head. “Seems like so much longer… anyway, he was able to overtake it for long enough to tell me to shoot him with the Colt. Since I knew that I couldn’t let the demon stay in him, and since I didn’t want to kill him, I shot him in the leg with it. The demon was exorcised, and it acted like any other shot to the leg would.”

“Ah.” Castiel nods, frowning as he takes this in. Then he says, “Dean is correct; that isn’t the same as this situation. Demons are meant to leave the vessels that they take in a manner that leaves them alive. Leviathans, on the other hand, never do. When they infect someone, they remain in that body indefinitely, and should they choose to leave it, the body will always be destroyed.”

“But then, there’s never been a situation like this before,” Sam presses. “You said it yourself: if we can neutralize them, then there’s a chance that we can safely remove them from your body. Right?”

“A chance,” he replies. “And I’m basing this sorely on speculation — and, perhaps, wishful thinking. In all likelihood, they can’t be taken care of without my dying in the process.”

“Cas, a shot to your abdomen isn’t the sort of death sentence that, say, a head shot is.” Sam stands up and starts pacing the room; it seems that thinking best while moving is a Winchester trait, not just one of Dean’s. “We could control it. I think. If you let one of us shoot you with the Colt, and then we got you to a hospital right away…” Sam frowns. “That could work, Cas. Kill the Leviathan, keep you alive.”

“You’re basing that on a whole lot of ‘maybes,’” Dean says skeptically. It’s not like he wants Cas to have to take the last resort; not even close. But there has to be something better than this, something that doesn’t involve shooting at all. “And come on, Sam. Getting shot in the abdomen is nothing like taking a bullet to the calf.”

“I know. It’s a way higher risk, and we’d have to get him to a hospital ASAP after the Leviathan are gone. But it’s worth a shot,” he says, meeting Dean’s eyes with a desperate look. “Come on. If we shoot the Leviathan they’ll die, but maybe we can do it in a way that won’t kill Cas.”

“But if we don’t kill Cas, we don’t kill the Leviathans, do we?” he asks, and he regrets it as soon as it’s out of his mouth, because it makes it sound kind of like he actually wants to kill Cas. Which, no, he doesn’t. Not now, anyway; maybe when all this is said and done and he can let himself be good and truly pissed at what happened before the Leviathan came into the picture — but still. Not now. “I mean. Um.”

“You’re right,” Castiel says, saving him from trying to explain his words. “The demon in your father wasn’t killed, was it, Sam?”

“No. But Azazel was stronger than the Leviathans in you are, right?” Sam shrugs. “I mean, it’s a whole lot of maybes, like you said. But it’s the most that we have to go on right now. And,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, “even if the shot didn’t kill them, it would still affect them. Hypothetically, it would weaken them and make it so that you could… expel them on your own. Through the opening of the bullet.”

“But they would still be alive,” says Castiel, as if that’s blatantly obvious and he doesn’t know why Sam hasn’t considered it. “They would still be a viable threat.”

“But you’d be alive,” Sam presses. “And come on, Cas. That’s more important.”

“No, it isn’t!” Castiel snaps, and the harshness of his words startles even Dean. “I’m responsible for this, and it’s my duty to set my mistakes right. Making up for what I’ve done is far more important than seeing to it that I live out a human life.”

He stops — freezes is more like it. In a quieter tone he says, “I apologize, Sam. I didn’t mean to speak to you like that, but… but my point still stands.”

“Your point is a piece of shit,” Dean says roughly. He fingers his flask, but Sam’s looking at him with disapproval, and he’s really not up for a talk about his drinking habits, so he lets it fall back onto the small card table. “How are you going to make it up to us — to the world — if you’re already dead?”

Castiel swallows. He hugs the sweatshirt that he’s borrowed from Sam against his chest, like he’s just suddenly become aware of how exposed he is. “I have to do what I can.”

“You’ll be able to do a lot more if you’re alive,” Dean replies. “Period. That’s it, Cas, got it?”

Castiel doesn’t reply, and although normally Dean would just take that as consent, right now he needs to hear him say it. “Got it?”

It takes him a moment to notice how Castiel’s hands are tight fists in the fabric of the sweatshirt, how his jaw is clenched in pain. “Cas!”

Finally, Cas meets his eyes, and Dean kind of wishes that he hadn’t, because the eyes that he’s seeing—those aren’t Castiel’s eyes. Castiel is stoic, never revealing what he feels because he’s a warrior of God and they’re not supposed to feel at all. They’re not supposed to have gazes that are this pain-filled, this desperate, begging him for help that he’d pretty sure he can’t actually give. Castiel is supposed to only let bits and pieces through of whatever it is that’s on his mind, not lay everything out so openly.

“Dean,” he says faintly, his eyes never leaving Dean’s face. “Dean. I think… I think it’s getting worse. We might not have as much time as I originally thought.”

And just like that, it’s decided. That one statement makes up Dean’s mind for him. He stands up, takes one quick drink from his flask, and says, “Okay. Where do we want to do this?”

*

They decide that the best place to get this done is somewhere where no one will bother them. And, because someone upstairs is apparently still watching this all with great interest, they’re currently surrounded by miles of forest. Campers would be a worry in other times, but with the November chill that hangs in the Idaho air, Dean is fairly certain that there’s not going to be anyone around to possibly witness what they’re going to have to do.

This is also convenient because there’s a hospital in town. A good one, he hopes, because if this goes the way that they’re hoping, they’re still going to need doctors on their side. The Colt is, after all, a gun, and getting shot isn’t something to take lightly. Particularly not an abdominal shot.

“Can you hang on until tonight?” Sam asks, hovering over Castiel. This all feels so familiar—brings back the memories that seem to have taken place years ago, of standing in Bobby’s house and planning the reverse-ritual to send the souls inside Cas back to Purgatory. It’s the same sort of deal now, really, complete with a Sam that’s too forgiving for his own good.

“I think so,” Cas replies. His face isn’t scraped up like last time, but he still looks like shit as he lies on the motel bed, looking pale and tired. “I promise, I’ll do everything in my power to see that they don’t gain any ground.”

“We know you will,” Sam says evenly. He looks like he’s a minute away from getting into the bed with Cas and patting his arm, telling him that everything’s going to be okay. Dean has no fucking idea how he can do this, be so steady and, well, comforting, like he doesn’t remember that Castiel is the reason why the cut in his hand has never fully gone away. Dean himself is full of nervous energy and a hundred conflicting thoughts. He keeps jumping from being pissed at Cas, to desperately wanting all of this to be over, wanting him to go back to his place in Heaven where he only drops in when it’s convenient, to being so fucking grateful that Cas isn’t dead, and wondering what chance there is now of them fixing everything that’s happened.

But he tries to do what Sam is doing and push all of that shit out of his mind. There’ll be time enough to sort it through if they succeed in keeping Cas alive tonight—and if they don’t, then, well, he’d rather just forget that this whole damn thing has ever happened. A selfish part of him wants the latter to happen, doesn’t want to deal with all of the changes that Cas’ presence has brought. A bigger part of him thinks that he’s a giant fucking tool for even entertaining that thought.

Dean glances at his watch — it’s past one by now. “What time do you want to set out?” he asks Sam. “It’ll be full dark by, what, seven? And I figure that we want to get this over with ASAP.”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” Sam passes a hand over his face, probably recalling the map of forest cover that they went over. “We probably don’t want to go too deep, just so that we can get to a hospital quickly. I mean, we’re going to need to leave the Impala parked by the road — don’t look at me like that, not unless you want to risk driving her into a bunch of trees with no path whatsoever between them — and Cas, I don’t think you’re going to be able to walk on your own. But on the other hand, we want to make sure that we’re well covered. So we should probably leave around… eight? I guess. That’ll give us enough time to get there and to find a decent place. Cas, that sound good to you?”

“It should be acceptable,” he replies, and that’s that. They’ve got a plan to go out into the woods and shoot Cas in the abdomen with the most powerful weapon they have, hope it kills the things within him while sparing him.

This is a plan based on so many maybes, and when Dean calls to tell Bobby about that, he says flatly, “Are you crazy? You can’t have agreed to play around with the Colt. Getting shot on the best of days is hell, but getting shot with that? That’s… that’s worse. Not to mention, you can’t be wanting to waste a bullet on something that probably won’t even work.”

“I know, Bobby,” he replies, glad that Sam and Cas are inside, not listening to this conversation. “I know it’s a fucking stupid idea, and I know that it’s probably not going to work, and who the hell knows where we’ll be then. Thing is, Cas’ due date is getting nearer and nearer, and we don’t have time to think of anything better. I mean, if you’ve got an idea I’d love to hear it, but…”

“If I had an idea I’d tell you,” says Bobby. “You know I don’t want to see Cas go through this any more than you do. But most of my lore is gone, and I can’t ever remember having come across something anything close to this.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure there’s no precedent for this kind of shit.” Which is just their luck, of course; not that Dean tries to wish harm on civilians, but why couldn’t some other innocent bastard have gone through this already? Just to give them some idea of what to expect.

“Well, you let me know how it does,” Bobby says after a pause. “And tell Cas that I’m wishin’ him the best.”

“Will do,” he replies. He ends the call, pocketing his phone and taking a moment to just stop and breathe by himself. Wishes, that’s all they’ve got left now. Maybe it’s all they’ve ever had, but he doesn’t think he’s ever felt it quite so keenly as he does now.

*

The afternoon passes painfully slowly. There’s not much that they can do (there isn’t even a television in the room) and there really isn’t anything to talk about at this point. Mostly Cas lies on Dean’s bed with his hands crossed over his stomach, his face not revealing anything of what he’s thinking. Occasionally he’ll grimace, as if in pain, but his expression quickly smoothes out. He and Sam both know that Cas doesn’t want to talk, so neither of them ask, even though Sam periodically looks away from his laptop and casts worries glances over at the other bed.

Dean, for his part, sits at the card table with an old deck that he found at the bottom of his bag, playing solitaire. He has to resist the urge to drink; he needs to be clearheaded tonight, as much as recent events might make him want to just be shitfaced for awhile.

Once, he halfheartedly offers to go out to get lunch, but Cas just shakes his head, and Sam says quietly, “Thanks, but I’m not really hungry.” And since Dean doesn’t know whether or not he can stomach anything tonight, he doesn’t go out, as much as he wants to get away from all this.

When eight o’clock finally, blessedly hits, Dean and Sam stand up at almost exactly the same time. Cas glances up and, seeing them on their feet, moves to get up as well. His movements are stiff, though, and he winces as he straightens up. Sam swallows and looks away, and Dean knows that it’s taking all of his self-control not to say something. But Cas has that defiant look that’s determinedly insisting that he goes through with this as solo as he can, so neither of them do anything.

They’re out the door in five minutes, and then Dean is finally behind the wheel of the Impala. It’s a relief to actually be doing something, even if it is just driving. At least they’re getting the show on the road. At least it’s more than playing cards with a depleted deck in a motel room while your former friend lies on a bed, knocked up with Purgatory spawn.

No one speaks, and it’s kind of like they’re on their way to a funeral. Dean doesn’t want to think like that, but it’s honestly the most apt comparison that he can come up with at the moment. They’re driving in a black car to a destination that none of them really want to go to, and they know that it’s entirely possible that one of them in here won’t be alive on the drive back. And the more he thinks about it the more comparisons he can find, so he forces the thoughts out by blasting music that none of them actually listen to.

“Here,” Sam says suddenly. “Pull over here, okay?”

Dean doesn’t think that this is a particularly noteworthy area — there are trees here and there were trees a mile back; there are probably trees ten miles in the distance — but Sam is the one with the map, so he parks on the side of the road. This late in the back of Idaho, there’s no one else on it. Which doesn’t make him feel any better about having to leave the car, but he’ll grudgingly admit that that isn’t the most important thing right now.

It’s cold and clear out, the sort of December night where it feels like snow is about to just start falling from the open blanket of stars above. Dean shivers and glances at Sam as they step out of the car, remembering what he said about the cold bringing back memories of Lucifer and Hell.

But if he’s having any sort of flashbacks right now, he’s dealing with them remarkably well as he stands by Castiel’s door, watching as he makes his way out of the Impala. He looks like he’s completely stable, like he isn’t dealing with the devil every day. “We got everything?” he asks, glancing at Dean.

“As far as I know.” He reaches into the trunk of the Impala and pulls out two high-quality flashlights, tossing one to Sam. “Got the Colt, got the flashlights… anything else?”

“No, I don’t think so. C’mon, Cas.” Sam’s hand hovers near Castiel’s shoulder as he leads the group into the woods. Dean walks behind them, keeping an eye out, just in case any stray campers or kids on dares are out tonight. He tries not to think about what they’re going to do.

They walk for maybe ten minutes, fifteen at the most, before they come to a small clearing in the woods. Sam pauses, looks around, and then glances at Dean. “Think this’ll do?”

“Yeah. Cas, you down with right here?”

Even in the crappy light of their flashlights, he can tell that Cas doesn’t look good. If anything, he’s paler than before, the circles under his eyes more prominent than ever. He’s shivering too, curling into the borrowed sweatshirt like it could do much more good. “I expect that this will suffice,” he says, his voice cracking slightly. “Dean. We need to hurry.”

“Right. Um.” He glances at Sam, who he figures is the brains behind this. He’s been trying to pretend that he isn’t about to shoot his onetime friend and either kill him or save his life.

Thankfully, Sam picks up the cue. “Cas, you should take off the sweatshirt. I know it’s cold, and I’m sorry, but Dean needs to be able to see what he’s doing.”

Cas nods and complies, pulling it off in the same businesslike way that he did earlier in the day. He rubs at his arms, staring off into the distance. The curve of his abdomen doesn’t look any better now than it did before; if anything, there are more bruises spreading across the surface.

Sam takes the sweatshirt from him and folds it up carefully, then lays it on the ground. Dean thinks that if Cas makes it out of this alive, then there’s going to be a hell of a lot of blood. The sweatshirt will probably be useful if an attempt to staunch the flow is made.

“Okay. Now, Dean, c’mere.” Sam steps up to Cas, and looks at him, somewhat guiltily. “Sorry, but can I, uh, touch it?”

Cas doesn’t look overjoyed at the suggestion, but his voice is more or less steady when he replies, “Of course. If it’s necessary.”

“Yeah, it is. Again, I’m sorry.” Sam gingerly lays a hand on the left side of his pregnancy. Castiel visibly flinches when he does, though he at least attempts to hide the fact.

“Here,” Sam says, pressing his fingers down on an area below Castiel’s heart, but well above his navel. “This is where you’re going to shoot, Dean. Should I mark it?”

“No.” It’s instantly seared into his mind, the area where he’s got to aim the Colt. Dean trusts himself; even if it is cold enough for his hands to have started to go numb, he’s a damn good shot, and this isn’t going to be one that he misses. “But what exactly am I hitting? Like, body part-wise?”

“The spleen,” Sam replies. “It’s messy and it’ll bleed like hell, so when this is said and done, you’re going to need to drive like we’re being chased by the legions of Heaven and Hell together. But it’s also a part that you can live without, and a shot to it isn’t always deadly. Isn’t usually, I mean,” he adds quickly. “And if you hit it right, hopefully nothing else will be too damaged. I mean, we can’t control everything, but, well, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

And if Sam is willing to bring luck into the equation, then Dean knows that there are a hell of a lot of ways that this could go wrong. But then, there always are. “Fine. Where do you want me to stand?”

Sam guides him into place. Clearly, he’s thought long and hard about all of this. Dean is close enough for him to easily be able to make the shot, but far enough away so that maybe the bullet will do less damage than it would if he was a foot closer. Maybe.

Once he’s where the clearing is supposed to be, his flashlight handed to Sam, Sam says quietly, “That’s… that’s it, Dean. Whenever you’re ready. I mean, if you still want to go through with this; if you don’t, I guess—”

“I do,” he interrupts. “I’ll do it, Sam.”

Sam nods. His voice is just shy of steady as he looks at Cas and says, “I. I’m sorry that it’s come to this, Cas, and I hope it works. But if it doesn’t, then just know that I forgive you, okay? For what you did with Crowley and with the souls. And to me, I guess. Just. Like I told you, I still think you’re one of us, and we’ve all done shitty things that we can be forgiven for. Or, well. I have. All right?”

Cas looks even more pained than he did before when he meets Sam’s gaze. “Thank you. That’s…that’s more, perhaps, than I deserve.”

“No. It’s really not,” Sam says, and then he’s biting his lip and stepping back behind Dean, out of his sight. The clearing is completely silent: no wind, no sounds of cars from the street they drove in on, not even a fox rustling in the woods or a night bird taking flight from one of the many trees around them.

Dean looks at Cas and swallows down the lump that he feels in his throat. “Cas.”

“Dean.” Castiel nods and then, his eyes desperate and his voice raw, he says, “I’m sorry. For everything.”

He thinks, just like he did before, when they were trying to save Cas from the souls, that this is where he’s supposed to tell him that everything is all right; that what he did is forgiven and forgotten. Water under the bridge; dust in the wind.

And just like then, he can’t bring himself to accept the apology, because as sincerely offered as it might be, it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the fact that they still don’t know how to kill the Leviathan, that Sam still sees things that he doesn’t want to talk about. It doesn’t change the fact that Castiel went behind his back and made alliances that aren’t acceptable.

It also doesn’t change the fact that Castiel was once his friend, that Dean would never have wished this on him. But still, that’s not enough.

“I know,” he replies. His vision is remarkably clear as he lifts the Colt, his hand steadier than it should be. “Are you ready?”

Castiel’s eyes never leave Dean’s face as he answers. “Yes.”

And it’s silent enough that the woods could be a desolate wasteland, and the stars above them are bright, brighter than Dean’s seen them in a very long time, and in their glow and the light from the two flashlights that Sam is holding, he can see Cas, looking at him pleadingly — though whether it’s for him to end it now or for him to say that he is forgiven, Dean doesn’t know—

He takes the shot without really thinking about it, applying what feels like a feather-light touch to the trigger, and then he hears the sharp crack of a bullet going out—

A half-second later, Castiel is dropping to his knees, hands clutching the left side of his abdomen. Dean’s shot hit its mark just as it should have, but he doesn’t take any pleasure in that as he and Sam run to Castiel’s side.

Sam drops the flashlights when they get there, using his hands to instead steady Cas, just applying enough of a touch to his shoulders to keep him upright. Dean stands next to him, watching in a twisted sort of fascination as the scene plays out:

There’s a pattern spreading across Cas’ abdomen, centered at the rapidly-bleeding shot. Lines like black veins twist beneath his skin, and one of his hands is clutching at Sam, and the other is splayed across the pregnancy, covering the gunshot wound. His lips are moving in what Dean thinks is a prayer, but he can’t hear anything over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. Everything seems unreal, despite the undeniable starkness of the cold against his skin, the certain brightness of the stars above.

And then the blood stops coming out from beneath Castiel’s hand. Dean thinks this is it, oh God, I’m sorry, Cas — and then black ooze starts to flow from it instead. Cas cries out this time, sharp enough for Dean to hear. His neck and shoulders arch back before he falls forward, like he’s got no strength at all.

“Sam,” he says. His voice is twisted with pain, worse than Dean’s ever heard it—and he’s heard Cas sound pretty fucking bad these past few hours. “Sam, it isn’t enough — you’ve got to give them more room —”

Sam looks towards Dean, begging for help, but Dean doesn’t get what Cas is saying any more than he does. All he can do is crouch down and ask helplessly, “Cas, what do you mean it’s not enough? I’m sorry, we don’t get what you’re saying—”

“The knife,” he says. “Please, the knife.”

“Oh,” Sam says quietly, and then he’s pulling something from his boots. The demon killing knife that they got from Ruby. In the light still emanating from the abandoned flashlight he leans close to Cas. “Dean, hold him, please. I need a good angle on this.”

Dean rushes to comply, although he’s still not sure what Sam is planning on doing. Castiel’s shoulders are burning beneath his hand, ten times hotter than they were when Dean held him through the Leviathan’s attack that morning. This close, Dean can hear the words that he’s rapidly saying under his breath in a language that Dean can’t understand. He thinks it’s Enochian.

Sam kneels in front of Cas, the knife in his shaking hand. “Tell me if I’m doing this wrong,” he says, and then he’s pressing it against Castiel’s abdomen, over one of the black veins. The cut is shallow, or it looks to be, but it’s enough. The Leviathans (dead, presumably, even if Cas is still alive and quivering in his arms) leak out, running down Castiel’s skin and pooling at his feet like oil.

“Faster. You don’t have much time,” Cas gasps between the prayer. Time before what? Dean wants to ask, because the Colt should have killed Cas already. That’s what it did for everything else: one shot, one death, all within seconds of each other. But maybe Samuel Colt didn’t know that angels existed. Maybe he never bargained on there being a purgatory.

It takes almost two minutes for Sam to be done, two minutes before Cas’ belly is lined with cuts of varying thickness (sometimes they didn’t bleed out immediately. Sometimes, Sam had to cut deeper) and the liquid-like spawn of the Leviathan are spread at his feet. Dean holds onto Cas through all of this—first just grasping his shoulders, the bare minimum, but then wrapping his arms around his chest and holding him tight in an embrace. Cas leans against him, his head falling back to rest on Dean’s shoulder as he says the same phrase in Enochian over and over again. Dean doesn’t know what it means, but it sounds like a prayer.

Sam puts the knife down when there’s nowhere else to cut and crouches in front of Cas, watching intently. Cas leans into Dean’s arms, and Dean lets him, not caring anymore as he watches the last of the black substance ooze out. His skin seems to shrink back in on him, and he looks smaller, thinner then he remembered.

Finally, it stops. For one single moment it’s silent again in the clearing—Cas sagged back against Dean, his wounds thick and clotted with the remains of the things he was carrying; Sam kneeling in front of him, his eyes meeting Dean, asking wordlessly if it’s all over—

And then Cas arches out of Dean’s grip, crying out in a language that humans didn’t invent, and there’s a bright, shining blue light pouring out of him. Dean shields his eyes, for all the good that it does. He can feel the heat as Cas dies inches away from him, can smell it, like a lightning bolt exploding in front of him. Then, seconds later, he slumps back against Dean, a dead weight that he automatically catches and holds.

Darkness comes after that. Dean opens his eyes, and even the flashlights are out. It’s only from the stars above now that he can see Cas in his arms, completely still. He can see the dark streams of blood pouring out of the lacerations on his abdomen.

“Cas,” Sam says. He reaches forward, touches Castiel’s cheek. “Please, don’t, Cas…”

“It’s too late,” Dean says. He’s surprised at the flatness in his voice, at the numbness that’s setting in as he holds Castiel’s corpse. He should feel something; anything at all, but the world just seems dark and dull and cold. “The Colt did its job, Sam.”

Sam pulls back, shaking his head rapidly and saying, “Come on, Dean, we can’t give up on him, not now—”

“There’s no point,” he growls. “Fuck, Sam, we lost. We took a chance, and we knew it wasn’t going to pay off, and he’s dead. He’s not going to come back.”

“No,” Sam says desperately. “No, he can’t — we can’t — please, God —”

And then Castiel’s eyes open and he gasps, blood pouring from the shot to his abdomen, and life pounds into Dean as he starts to stand, telling Sam to take Cas, hold off the bleeding while he gets them to the hospital. And all he can think as Sam scoops up the fallen angel and they start at as much of a run as they can manage is, God, don’t you fucking dare make me go through that again—because it doesn’t matter how much he’s still pissed at what Cas did, how much (or how little) he’s forgiven him for hurting Sam. Right now, the only thing that Dean cares about is seeing to it that he doesn’t have to mourn Castiel again.


End file.
